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THE FAITH 
OF ROBERT BROWNING 



BY 
EDWARD A. G. HERMANN 



*'iSo take and use Thy work: 
Amend what flaws may lurk. 
What strain o' ihe stuff, what 
warpings past the aim!'' 

Rabbi Ben Ezra 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1916 



1^ 



p'^ 



Cl.-A'4'4 5912 



DEC -I 1916 



Copyright, 1916 
Sherman, French & Company 



*i<^ / . 



IN 

GRATITUDE AND LOVE 

THIS LITTLE BOOK 

IS DEDICATED 

TO 

MY WIFE 

COMPANION AND HELPER 

IN THE 

LIFE OF FAITH 

AND IN 

THE WORK OF MY MINISTRY 



" He gathers earth's whole good into his arms ; 
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise, 
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her. 
One great aim, like a guiding-star, above — 
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift 
His manhood to the height that takes the prize; 
A prize not near — lest overlooking earth 
He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote. 
So that he rest upon his path content; 
But day by day, while shimmering grows shine. 
And the faint circlet prophesies the orb. 
He sees so much as, just evolving these. 
The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength. 
To due completion, will suffice this life, 
And lead him at his grandest to the grave." 
— Colomhe's Birthday. 



Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, 
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
A chorus-ending from Euripides, — 
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears 
As old and new at once as nature's self, 
To rap and knock and enter in our soul. 
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring. 
Round the ancient idol, on his base again, — 
The grand Perhaps ! We look on helplessly. 
There the old misgivings, crooked questions are: 
This good God, — what He could do, if He 

would. 
Would, if He could — then must have done long 

since : 
If so, when, where and how? some way must be; 
Once feel about, and soon or late you hit 
Some sense, in which it might be, after all. 

. . . That way 
Over the mountain, which who stands upon 
Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road; 
While, if he views it from the waste itself. 
Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow. 
Not vague, mistakable! what's a break or two 
Seen from the unbroken desert either side.^ 
And then (to bring in fresh philosophy) 
What if the breaks themselves should prove at 

last 
The most consummate of contrivances 
To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith ? " 
— Bishop Blougram's Apology. 



THE FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

In an attempt to interpret the faith of 
Robert Browning it may not be necessary to 
go back to the source and trace the course of 
all those streams of thought that flowed down 
into the life of the last century. We must, 
however, take into account some of the more 
important intellectual tendencies of modern 
times, for we can hardly hope to understand 
Robert Browning's message, nor fully appre- 
ciate the greatness of his faith, unless we real- 
ize to some extent the power of those deep, 
silent under-currents and cross-currents of 
error which swept so many from their old 
moorings and carried them into an unknown 
sea, only to make shipwreck of their faith. 
Browning not only resisted these treacherous 
currents but made progress in spite of them. 
Amid the storms that raged about his intel- 
lectual life he always felt secure because Hope 
was his anchor, and he came into port grandly 
because God had been the Captain of his soul. 

In many ways the century that produced 
Robert Browning was the greatest in the his- 
tory of the world. The progress of the last 
1 



2 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

fifty years has been unprecedented. It has 
been a century of material, intellectual and 
moral achievement. Notwithstanding the pres- 
ence in our civilization of a crass materialism 
and its progeny of evils, we may say that faith 
played no little part in this wonderful progress 
and the century ended with a shout of triumph. 

But the nineteenth century began with a wail 
of despair. What was wrong with humanity.? 
Humanity had lost its faith in God. Back in 
the past something had happened that had 
shaken the very foundations of belief and a 
satisfactory readjustment had not yet taken 
place. 

Just as before and after a volcanic eruption 
you can feel the vibrations in the earth, indi- 
cating that something is about to happen, or 
has happened, in the world of nature, so, for 
a long time before and after the Renaissance 
and the Reformation, disturbing influences were 
at work in the intellectual and religious life of 
the world. The sub-normal conditions of Eu- 
ropean society in the Middle Ages made an 
upheaval necessary. The soul-life of human- 
ity may be buried for centuries in a grave dug 
by a selfish materialism, or a false philosophy, 
or a tyrannical ecclesiasticism, but in some 
great crisis, — some joyous resurrection day, 
— it will arise again and assert its power. 
When these upheavals occur, whether we think 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 3 

of them in relation to the past as a resurrec- 
tion or in relation to the future as a new birth, 
the new knowledge acquired and the new forces 
set in motion impose upon future generations 
the task of readjusting the new knowledge to 
the growing life. This is what has actually 
happened in our modern era. We have been 
busy during these past few centuries trying to 
find our place in the new universe that has 
come into existence through Copernicus and 
others, and we are just beginning to get our 
bearings and to recover our sense of an imma- 
nent God. 

The Renaissance was a new birth in the in- 
tellectual life and the Reformation a new birth 
in the religious life of the world, — upheavals, 
if you please, from which have come influences 
whose power for evil and for good has not yet 
been full^'^ spent. For the time being the far- 
away God of the Dark Ages was rediscovered 
in this world. The former attitude of other- 
worldliness gave place to a humanistic tend- 
ency, and interest was centered not in a dis- 
tant heaven but in the affairs of this life. 
Reason and Faith began to breathe the air of 
freedom. But even in this new atmosphere 
lurked the germs of a morbid pessimism which 
was destined to disease the mind of a later gen- 
eration. The shifting of emphasis to this 
world, during the Renaissance, caused a reac- 



4 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

tion afterwards into an extreme form of pan- 
theism in which God, as a spirit pervading all 
things, was vaguely felt, but the sense of God 
as a Personality entirely lost. And pantheism 
inevitably leads either to atheism or to agnos- 
ticism. 

On the other hand, the narrow orthodoxy 
of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century 
reacted into Deism which pushed God so far 
away again that it was practically a renun- 
ciation of Him. Reason was enthroned and 
infidelity ran rampant. Compte thought that 
humanity had gotten along so far that it could 
henceforth easily dispense with a God. He 
declared that " science would conduct God to 
the frontier of His universe and politely bow 
Him out, with thanks for His provisional serv- 
ices." That is practically what Deism did, — 
with the "thanlcs" omitted! The light by 
which the good God had meant to lead His chil- 
dren into a clearer conception of the truth was 
revealed so suddenly and with such intensity 
that many were blinded and were left to grope 
in the darkness of unbelief. The reaction that 
set in after the Reformation is well stated by 
Symonds. In referring to the modern age of 
the disintegration of old beliefs he says : " We 
are undergoing the greatest cataclysm of 
thought that the world has ever suffered, and 
in the midst of it all some must perish. The 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 5 

cataclysm began with the Reformation. That 
was the first and most powerful introduction 
of a scepticism which since has never ceased to 
work, successfully undermining in the world at 
large ... all creeds, from the most insignifi- 
cant to the most vital. And in this destructive 
work science has helped." I quote this well- 
known passage not only to point out the perils 
of an intellectual democracy but also to show 
the tendency toward the scientific materialism 
which robbed so many thinkers of the nine- 
teenth century of their faith in God. 

During these few centuries the pendulum of 
thought swung constantly between the ex- 
tremes of pantheism and transcendentalism. 
In discussing the religious problem and show- 
ing that the modern trend is toward immanence 
Eucken says that both these views, — the pan- 
theistic and the transcendental, — result in a 
life devoid of religion. " At first the divine is 
brought near to our existence ; then it is closely 
associated with it as an inspiring force, and 
finally it totally disappears, or vanishes to an 
unapproachable distance." 

These were some of the influences that en- 
tered into the intellectual life of the nineteenth 
century, and they naturally helped to create an 
atmosphere of pessimism. It is no wonder 
that a wail of despair went up from the heart 
of humanity, for, if we may use Matthew Ar- 



6 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

nold's phrase in this connection, humanity was 
lying helpless and hopeless between two worlds, 
— " one dead, the other powerless to be born." 
We need only to read the literature of this 
period to see how deeply the atmosphere was 
colored with gloom. Literature is like a vast 
mirror reflecting the life of the age which pro- 
duces it. Schopenhauer, prince of pessimistic 
philosophers, while personally not only unat- 
tractive but even repulsive and, therefore, 
often friendless, had a host of unconscious fol- 
lowers who, like him, felt only pain and want 
and deemed it sheer folly to seek peace in this 
world or to hope for happiness in a world to 
come. Their creed is well expressed in 
Thompson's familiar lines : 

" O length of the intolerable hours ! 
O nights that are as aeons of slow pain! 
O Time, too ample for our vital powers ! 
O Life whose woeful vanities remain 
Immutable for all of all our legions 
Through all the centuries and in all the regions, 
Not of your speed and variance do we complain. 
We do not ask a longer term of strife, 
Weakness and weariness and nameless woes; 
We do not claim renewed and endless life 
When this which is our torment here shall close, 
And everlasting conscious inanition! 
We yearn for speedy death in full fruition. 
Dateless oblivion and divine repose." 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 7 

Can you imagine a philosophy of life more 
hopeless than this? Even Buddha's creed was 
nobler. An intellectual atmosphere in which 
such a poem could be produced must have been 
devoid of vital faith. 

Into an atmosphere saturated, or at least 
tainted, with such pessimistic ideas three great 
religious poets were born. One was a repre- 
sentative of the classic type whose beauty of 
form almost makes one long for the intellectual 
culture of ancient Greece ; another, a singer 
whose sweet music is often in the minor key, 
yet so mystic in its rhythm that somehow it 
has the power to subdue the heart's restlessness 
and sorrow; the third, a rugged, fearless 
prophet whose glowing idealism and moral 
militancy summon us to a life of heroic thought 
and action. I said that all three were religious 
poets, but we must yield to Robert Browning 
the place of pre-eminence as a poet of faith. 
For the sake of contrast I shall quote a few 
characteristic lines, first from Matthew Arnold 
and then from Alfred Tennyson. 

Arnold's religious attitude is admirably set 
forth in his poem entitled " Dover Beach " : 

" The sea is calm tonight, 
The tide is full, the moon lies fair 
Upon the straits ; — on the French coast the light 
Gleams, and is gone ; the cliffs of England stand. 
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 



8 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Come to the window; sweet is the night air, 
Only, from the long line of spray- 
Where the sea meets the moon -blanched sand. 
Listen! you hear the grating roar 
Of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling, 
At their return, up the high strand. 
Begin, and cease, and then again begin. 
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
The eternal note of sadness in. 

*' Sophocles long ago 
Heard it on the ^gean, and it brought 
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 
Of human misery; we 
Find also in the sound a thought 
Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

" The sea of faith 
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 
But now I only hear 
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 
Retreating to the breath 

Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear, 
And naked shingles of the world. 

" Ah, Love, let us be true 
To one another, for the world which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams. 
So various, so beautiful, so new. 
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light. 
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help in pain; 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 9 

And we are here as on a darkling plain. 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and 

flight. 
Where ignorant armies clash by night." 

These melancholy moods, so characteristic 
of Matthew Arnold, were born of a sense of 
spiritual loss. He is not a poet of faith, but 
of despair. His face is ever turned toward the 
past, and he sighs for the golden glory of a 
day that will never come back again. 

Tennyson stands half-way between Arnold 
and Browning. Like the latter, he is the 
product of the scientific age which produced 
Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, John Stuart 
Mill and Herbert Spencer. He was thor- 
oughly familiar with current scientific knowl- 
edge and in his efforts to reconcile science with 
religion he coined many striking phrases. But 
in order to prove the correctness of some pet 
theory, or to defend some favorite doctrine, he 
is quoted by sceptics as often as by believers. 
Professor Royce, of Harvard, in his " Studies 
of Good and Evil," devotes an entire chapter 
to a discussion of the " Pessimism of Tenny- 
son," and shows what a great change had come 
over the poet's faith from the time he wrote 
" Locksley Hall " to the time he wrote " Locks- 
ley Hall Sixty Years After." Indeed, we 
know that even in his earlier years Tennyson 



10 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

was so profoundly touched by the mystery of 
human sorrow that his faith was well nigh 
eclipsed. In that great religious poem, " In 
Memoriam," in which he faces the problem 
which in another form baffled the mind of 
yEschylus and Job, he confesses that we who 
love, and lose, and suffer, are like mere chil- 
dren " crying in the night," like children " cry- 
ing for the light, and with no language but a 
cry." And again he cries out pathetically: 

" I falter where I firmly trod, 
And, falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar stairs 
That slope through darkness up to God, 

" I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
And gather dust and chafF, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 
And faintly trust the larger hope." 

In the vast world of life " so various, so 
beautiful, so new," Arnold could see " neither 
joy, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor 
help in pain." Browning, too, had heard the 
" melancholy roar " of the " sea of faith," but 
its sadness did not depress him. For mingled 
with what seemed to Arnold the " eternal note 
of sadness " Browning heard an " eternal 
note " of joy. Browning, too, heard all 
around him the shrieks of human despair, but 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 11 

he could sing hymns of hope through stormy, 
starless nights, because his spiritual instincts 
always foretold the dawning of the new day. 

" Love, hope, fear, faith — these make humanity," 

he said. 

And in the indistinct twilight which comes 
between the darkness and the day, where Ten- 
nyson only " groped," and " faltered," and 
" faintly trusted " the " larger hope," Brown- 
ing was confident and courageous. As he said 
of Sordello, we may say of him: 

" He at least believed in soul, was very sure of 
God,"— 

a line which Miss Ethel Naish says represents 
the " irreducible minimum " of his optimistic 
creed. And he could reach no sublimer mood 
than when he cried out with the joy which is 
the fruit of assurance: 

" God ! Thou art Love ! I build my faith on 
that ! " 

At a time when men's minds were most be- 
fogged there was need for such a man of vision 
who could read the spiritual meaning back of 
the conflicts of the new age, give a fresh in- 
terpretation of the eternal verities, and start 



12 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

humanity again on its upward march toward 
God. 

One of the foremost literary critics of our 
day has pronounced Browning as " the most 
profoundly subtle mind that has exercised it- 
self in poetry since Shakespeare." A man of 
intense personal sympathy, his imagination 
penetrated into every phase of human experi- 
ence, and his lofty idealism enabled him to win 

" God out of knowledge and good out of infinite 
pain. 
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a 
stain." 

His exuberant spirit sometimes took a playful 
mood, but he was never a mere sentimentalist. 
With warmth of feeling there was always depth 
of thought. Indeed, so deeply did he delve 
into the most intricate problems of existence 
and so earnestly did he search for an intellec- 
tual solution that he is regarded by some as a 
philosopher no less than as a poet. It is often 
difficult to draw a sharp line between Browning 
the poet and Browning the philosopher. It 
would not be improper to say, as Professor 
Jones suggests, that he was a philosopher in 
the sense in which Plato was a poet. His 
genius was consecrated to the noble task of 
revealing both beauty and truth. It was, no 
doubt, the consciousness of great intellectual 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 13 

strength that led him, after the death of Mrs. 
Browning, to wander into the dangerous field 
of metaphysics, but this latter part of his lit- 
erary career has been considered as the period 
of decadence. Much of his last work lacks the 
daring intellectual force and the moral vigor 
of his earlier years, and there are weak places 
where the speculations of the would-be philoso- 
pher break down. The cause of this decline 
has been attributed to failing health and the 
grief which the poet felt over the loss of his 
devoted wife, who during her life-time had been 
the inspiration of his best work. 

But Browning never ceased to be stimulating 
and helpful. If his faith is occasionally over- 
shadowed with a cloud of doubt we somehow 
feel that behind the cloud the sun is still shin- 
ing and in a moment or two will burst out 
again in all its glory. His intellectual cour- 
age often fills us with the love of adventure, 
and we begin our quest of truth in some un- 
tried and unknown land. We are lured across 
green, sunlit meadows where song-birds flood 
the air with melody, and where we may pluck 
the rarest flowers of the imagination. Then 
comes the climb over the steep hills, and we get 
a vision of the mystic heights beyond. The 
road winds, and is often rough and stony, but 
though the feet bleed and the heart grow 
weary, we go on in our quest until — we real- 



14 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

ize that we have wandered into a vast wilder- 
ness of thought and are " lost," and can hardly 
find our way out! We fain would travel back 
again over the old beaten road, and stifle for- 
ever the questionings of the mind and the un- 
satisfied hunger of the heart. But it is in such 
moments of mental darkness that the spirit of 
the adventurer comes to our aid, and quickens 
our faltering faith, and guides us out of dark- 
ness into the light of truth. 

" If I stoop 
Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud, 
It is but for a time ; I press God's lamp 
Close to my breast ; its splendor, soon or late, 
Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge some day." 

But it is Browning the poet, not the philoso- 
pher, who inspires us with his gospel of cour- 
age and hope. His greatness is not due to the 
artistic form in which he clothed his thoughts. 
It is the religious element that runs through 
all his work that sets him apart as a man of 
faith. His art is merely the channel through 
which he ministers to the needs of the higher 
life. He was one of the greatest exponents of 
the art of optimism that the world has ever 
seen. One of his best interpreters puts him in 
that class of poets who are also prophets, and 
says : " He was never the ' idle singer of an 
empty day,' but one for whom poetic enthusi- 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 15 

asm was intimately bound up with religious 
faith, and who ' spoke in numbers ' not merely 
because ' the numbers came,' but because they 
were for him the necessary vehicle of an in- 
spiring thought." 

Because of the strong dramatic element in 
Browning's writings it has seemed difficult for 
some to determine just what is the poet's own 
faith, for as a literary artist he could easily 
hide his own feelings behind the many charac- 
ters created by his vivid and versatile imag- 
ination. But as we move among Browning's 
men and women we cannot escape the influence 
of his wonderful personality. The great soul 
of the man cannot be hid. His faith is like a 
vein of gold running through the cumbersome 
mass of science, philosophy and art, sometimes 
shining clearly on the surface, at other times 
imbedded in the crude rock. But if we have 
the eye for spiritual beauty and the instinct of 
the lover of the truth we can readily distin- 
guish what is pure gold from what is worthless 
or inferior foreign matter. The vein here and 
there runs deep, and he who would possess the 
gold must dig. We have picked up from this 
mine of intellectual and spiritual treasure only 
a few nuggets which may serve as specimens of 
the rich quality of his faith. 

Ernest Haeckel has declared that " God, 
freedom and immortality are the three great 



16 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

buttresses of superstition which it is the busi- 
ness of science to destroy." I shall not try 
to prove that he was wrong. But I should like 
to contrast with his rank materialism Brown- 
ing's fine spiritual idealism, and stress the 
practical value of his faith. These three 
" buttresses of superstition " at which Haeckel 
would point the destructive guns of science are 
the very foundation-stones that support 
Browning's massive temple. He could see no 
such fatal antagonism between science and re- 
ligion. It was precisely along these lines that 
he built up his sublime faith, notwithstanding 
the fact that he accepted the best conclusions 
of contemporary science as the most satisfac- 
tory explanations of natural phenomena. He 
believed in God and man and immortality, and 
he was no worse off than Haeckel. On the 
other hand, the application of his faith to the 
experiences and problems of life proved him to 
be a man of good, practical common-sense. 
His virile manhood was the direct outgrowth 
of his vital faith. Superstition cannot pro- 
duce a type of noble character, nor can science 
rob us of that which is best in life and religion. 
Perhaps Browning was not always orthodox in 
the strictly evangelical sense, but who can deny 
that with open mind he ever sought for truth, 
and having found it, followed it with an intel- 
lectual honesty and a moral courage that mark 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 17 

him as a true man and a prophet of God? 
Instead of destroying his faith in a God of 
whom he thought as Wisdom, Goodness, Power, 
Love, science only strengthened and deepened 
it. When God seemed lost in all the intricate 
and complex machinery of natural law, this 
brave man took the telescope from the hands 
of the sceptical scientist and, looking up, cried 
out : " Behold ! I see an angel standing in the 
sun ! " Likewise he took the microscope and 
read the mystic secret of life that slumbered in 
the heart of a rose, — " I saw God everywhere." 
Science gave him the idea of God as a First 
Great Cause, eternally creating, faithfully sus- 
taining, lovingly permeating the life of Nature 
and the life of man. He conceived of God as 
the source, the substance and the sum of all 
things, animate and inanimate; mysteriously 
transcending His creation and yet unceasingly 
working in it; carrying out His purposes of 
holy love in accordance with an orderly 
method. And the see-er becomes the say-er; 
the poet turns prophet and acts as mediator 
between science and religion. If he saw God 
everywhere it was his joyous privilege to in- 
terpret God to those who were in doubt. 

" I spoke as I saw; 
I report as a man may of God's work, — all's love, 
yet all's law. 



18 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Now I lay down the judgeship He lent me. Each 
faculty tasked 

To perceive Him, has gained an abyss where a dew- 
drop was asked." 

But it was not through a purely rational 
process that Browning found God. It is true 
that as a great religious philosopher he de- 
lighted to test his strength, and piled up argu- 
ment upon argument until the apex of his 
intellectual pyramid touched the very heavens 
wherein the Divine being sat enthroned. But 
personally he did not need the proof of logic 
to convince him of the existence of God. It 
was rather through a process of spiritual intu- 
ition that he made this greatest of all discov- 
eries, — God ! The scientist may sweep the 
starry heavens with his telescope in his search 
for God and still cry out with Job in the bitter 
agony of disappointment : " O that I knew 
where I might find Him ! " But this was to 
him the grandest, most self-evident fact in the 
universe. His faith here has all the assurance 
of certain knowledge. It is sheer folly to at- 
tempt to prove mathematically what authenti- 
cates itself as the truth to the receptive mind 
and believing heart. 

" I hnow that He is there, as I am here, 
By the same proof which seems no proof at all. 
It so exceeds familiar forms of proof." 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 19 

He knows God through spiritual fellowship, — 
feels Him as a sublime Reality throbbing at 
the very centre of life and things. 

In " Pauline," his first published poem, we 
already see that lofty idealism which is charac- 
teristic of all his finest work. In these years of 
early manhood, — he was then only twenty, — 
there struggled in his soul mysterious forces 
which drew him irresistibly toward God. His 
spiritual attitude determined his moral growth : 

" I have always had one lode-star ; now 
As I look back I see that I have halted 
Or hastened as I looked toward that star, — 
A need, a trust, a yearning after God." 

" My soul must still advance. 
I cannot chain my soul; it will not rest 
In its clay prison, this narrow sphere; 
It has strange impulse, tendency, desire 
Which no wise I account for, nor explain. 
But cannot stifle, being bound to trust 
* All feelings equally." 

In this divine restlessness of youth he bursts 
out passionately: 

" O God ! where do they tend, — these struggling 
aims? 
What would I have? What is this sleep which 
seems 



20 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

To bound all? Can there be a waking point of 

crowning life ? 
And what is that I hunger for but God ? " 



" My God ! My God ! Let me for once look on 
Thee 
As though naught else existed, we alone! 
And as creation crumbles, my soul's spark 
Expand till I can say, — even from my self, — 
' I need Thee and I feel Thee and I love Thee.' " 

And " Pauline " concludes with this compre- 
hensive statement which may be taken as the 
poet's own confession of faith: 

" I believe in God and truth and love." 

To Browning God was not only an abstract 
principle, nor even a divine spirit diffused 
through the universe. He was a personality, 
— a God of power, righteousness and love, 
manifesting Himself in nature, in man and in 
Christ. 

Browning is not usually regarded as a poet 
of nature, and yet he has much in common with 
Shelley and Wordsworth, who were considered 
the representative nature poets of the early 
part of the nineteenth century. In " Pauline," 
" Paracelsus " and " Sordello " we discover 
traces of Shelley's influence. Shelley's music 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 21 

struck a responsive chord in Browning's heart, 
and the grace and beauty of his descriptions 
stirred his imagination. But the soul that 
thirsts for the water of life can never be satis- 
fied merely with the delicate tracery on the out- 
side of the silver cup which has been emptied of 
its life-giving contents. Shelley's beauty of 
form appealed to Browning, but Browning 
hungered and thirsted for God! Poor Shelley 
did not so much as mention the name of God. 
While he was at Oxford he wrote an essay " On 
the Necessity of Atheism," and in accordance 
with his wish the simple epitaph on his tomb- 
stone in Italy describes him as an " atheist." 
Although he tried to abolish God from His uni- 
verse, yet he did recognize a sort of spiritual 
presence pervading the world: 

" One remains, the many change and pass ; 
Heaven's light forever shines; earth's shadows 

flee. 
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 
Stains the white radiance of eternity 
Until Death tramples it to fragments." 

The '* One " to whom Shelley so beautifully 
yet so vaguely refers is to Browning the un- 
changing God of love and power. 

Wordsworth goes a step farther than Shelley 
and sees through nature's loveliness the spirit 
of nature's God: 



22 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

" The clouds were touched 
And in their silent faces did he read 
Unutterable love ! " 

It is the mature man who is speaking in '' Tin- 
tern Abbey " : 

" I have learned to look 
On nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing ofttimes the 

still, sad music of humanity; 
Not harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue." 

But Wordsworth was not a poet of humanity 
in the sense in which Browning was. A friend 
once said to Browning, " You have not a great 
love for nature, have you ? " to which the poet 
replied, " Yes, I have, but I love men and women 
better." Browning went beyond Shelley in that 
he thought of nature, with Wordsworth, as 
simply the garment of God. As a man of 
faith Browning was superior to Wordsworth 
in that he was not merely a poet of nature but 
also a poet of the human soul. 

And yet in his best religious passages Words- 
worth seems to fall into a vague, pantheistic 
mood as, for example, he continues in " Tintern 
Abbey": 

" I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING S3 

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and the mind of man; 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 
And rolls through all things." 

But Browning's God is not only a " pres- 
ence " or an indefinable " something " or a 
" motion and a spirit " that pervades nature 
like ether. He is a creative Cause and a con- 
trolling Will. Browning was a pronounced 
evolutionist before Alfred Russel Wallace and 
Charles Darwin had given the world the result 
of their investigations, but he was a Christian 
evolutionist. He thought of evolution as a 
principle of life, a method of development, 
God's way of working. In describing the evo- 
lutionary process Huxley somewhere says, in 
his characteristic, agnostic style, " The human 
species, like others, plashed and floundered 
amid the general stream of evolution, keeping 
its head above the water as best it might, and 
thinking neither of whence nor whither." 
Browning's spiritual instincts enabled him to 
look at the evolutionary process from a higher 
plane. He thought of it not as a blind upward 
struggle, but as an orderly movement that had 
its beginning and its end in God. He believed 



M FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

in a God who works according to law upward 
physically through nature to man, and intel- 
lectually, morally and spiritually through man 
to the Christ ideal. While scientific material- 
ism left the question of agency unsolved and 
presented the doctrine of evolution as atheistic, 
it is evident that Browning regards God as be- 
ing back of and in the process, directing it to- 
ward a divine goal. There is a remarkable 
passage in " Paracelsus " which expresses his 
faith in an immanent, eternally creative God. 
It is all the more remarkable because it was 
written in 1835, while Darwin's " Origin of Spe- 
cies," which, in a certain sense, it anticipates, 
was first published in 1859. In a letter to Dr. 
Fumivall, written in 1881, touching this point, 
Browning said : " All that seemed proved in 
Darwin's scheme was a conception familiar to 
me from the beginning." 

" The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, 
And the earth changes like a human face ; 
The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, 
Winds into the stone's heart, out-branches bright 
In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, 
Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask, — 
God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are 

edged 
With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate ; 
When in the solitary wastes strange groups 
Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like. 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 25 

Staring together with their eyes on flame, — 
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod; 
But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
Over its breast to waken it; rare verdure 
Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, 
Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; 
The grass grows bright, the boughs are swollen 

with blooms 
Like chrysalids impatient for the air. 
The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run 
Along the furrows, ants make their ado; 
Above, birds fly in merry flocks; the lark 
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 
Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls 
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek 
Their loves in wood and plain, — and God renews 
His ancient rapture. Thus He dwells in all, 
From life's minute beginnings, up at last 
To man, — the consummation of this scheme 
Of being, the completion of this sphere of life. 
And man produced, all has its end thus far. 
But in completed man begins anew 
A tendency toward God." 

Thus in his scheme it is seen that man is re- 
lated physically to nature below him, and spir- 
itually to the God above. If with the perfec- 
tion of man's body natural evolution has 
reached a state of arrested development, with 



26 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

man also begins a process of spiritual evolu- 
tion which has its goal in the moral ideal. 

" Progress is man's distinctive mark alone ; 
Not God's, and not the beast's. God is; they 

are; 
Man partly is, but wholly hopes to be." 

In " Prince Hoenstiel-Schwangau " this lower 
side of man's relationship is emphasized: 

" For many a thrill of kinship I confess to 
With the powers called nature, animate and in- 
animate ; 
In parts or in the whole there's something there 
Manlike that somehow meets the man in me." 

But in " Rabbi Ben Ezra " there is the con- 
sciousness of a nobler origin and a diviner 
destiny : 

" Rejoice we are allied 
To that which doth provide. 
And not partake, effect and not receive. 
A spark disturbs our clod, 
Nearer we hold of God 
Who gives than of His tribes that take." 

And again in " Ferishtah's Fancies " : 

" I needs must blend the quality of man 
With quality of God." 

But this spiritual kinship with God does not 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 27 

mean absolute identity. In " A Death in a 
Desert " he makes it very clear that while man 
partakes of the nature of God, he has a distinct 
individuality : 

" Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve ; 
A master to obey, a Cause to take. 
Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become." 

A few lines from " Christmas Eve " will show 
the spiritual kinship that exists between the 
creature and Creator: 

" Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast 
Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed; 
Though He is so bright and we so dim. 
We are made in His image to witness Him." 

In Rabbi Ben Ezra's fine interpretation of 
life as struggle, growth, attainment there is 
often the sense of failure. But that is all 
right ! The motive, the intention, the dominat- 
ing purpose of life is there ! 

" All I could never be. 
All men ignored in me. 
This I was worth to God. 

" What I aspired to be 
And was not, comforts me; 
A brute I might have been, but would not 
sink in the scale." 



28 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

The old Rabbi looks forward to the time when 
the body shall have served its purpose in pro- 
jecting the soul on its lone, upward way, and 
he summons age 

" To grant youth's heritage, 
Life's struggle having so far reached its term. 
Thence shall I pass approved 
A man for aye removed 
From the developed brute, 
A God, though in the germ." 

In thinking of this slow upward movement 
of life one cannot help recalling that profound 
utterance of St. Paul in Romans where with 
a grand sweep of the imagination he sees na- 
ture in the agony of birth-throes producing 
the spiritual man, and with his great mind 
grasps the spiritual meaning of it all. " The 
whole creation travaileth together in pain until 
now. . . . For the earnest expectation of the 
creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons 
of God." And this point having been reached, 
the words of the Apostle John take on a new 
meaning : " Beloved, now are we the children 
of God and it doth not yet appear what we 
shall be, but we know that when it shall appear 
we shall be like Hirriy for we shall see Him as 
He is." All the way through man's moral 
progress is nothing more than the spiritual in- 
carnation of God. 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 29 

But in those lonely hours of the soul when we 
are baffled by life's mysteries and dissatisfied 
with Browning's faith in a God manifested in 
nature and in the life of man, and we feel the 
need of some deeper truth to hearten us, and 
we go to him with Philip's old desire burning 
in our hearts and trembling on our lips, — 
" Show us the Father and it sufficeth us," — 
this great interpreter of life and religion rever- 
ently unveils for us the face of Jesus Christ. 
" In Him dwelt the fullness of the God-head 
bodily." Jesus was God manifested in the 
flesh. It is remarkable that as a youth he was 
deeply impressed with the Gospel story and 
entered into spiritual fellowship with the human 
God in Jesus: 

" Can I forego the trust that He loves me ? 
.... Do I not 
Pant when I read of Thy consummate power. 
And burn to see Thy calm, pure truths outflash 
The brightest gleams of earth's philosophy .^^ 

Oft have I stood by Thee, 

Have I been keeping lonely watch with Thee 
In the damp night by weeping Olivet, 
Or leaning on Thy bosom, proudly less. 
Or dying with Thee on the lonely Cross, 
Or witnessing thine outburst from the tomb." 

He thoroughly believed in the Incarnation, 
in the infinite sacrifice and suffering of God, in 



30 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

the power of the Resurrection Life. Love is 
the theme that runs through all the music of 
God's life. In the following quotations we get 
glimpses of the height and depth and breadth 
of his faith in God. 

" I never realized God's birth before. 
How He grew likest God in being born. 
Such ever was love's way, — to rise, it stoops." 

" Would I suiFer for him that I love ? So wouldst 

thou, — so wilt thou ! 
So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineiFablest, ut- 
termost crown. 
And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up 

nor down 
One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by 

no breath. 
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins 

issue with death! 
As Thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be 

proved 
Thy power, that exists with it and for it, of being 

beloved ! 
He who did most shall bear most; the strongest 

shall stand the most weak. 
'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for; my 

flesh that I seek 
In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, 

it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee, — a Man 

like to me 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 31 

Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever! A 

Hand like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! 

See the Christ stand ! " 

" This man so cured regards the curer then 
As, — God forgive me, — who but God Himself, 
Creator and sustainer of the world. 
That came and dwelt in flesh on it a while. 
The very God ! — think, Abid ; dost thou think ? 
So the All-great were the All-loving too! 
So through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, * O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
Face my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 
Thou hast no power, nor mayst conceive of mine. 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love 
And thou must love me who have died for thee.' " 

Browning was once discussing his own faith 
with Mrs. Orr, his friend and biographer, and 
he closed the conversation by reading to her 
the " Epilogue from Dramatis Personae," in 
which his own Christian faith is contrasted with 
the ancient faith of Judaism as set forth by 
David, and with modern scepticism of which 
Renan was the chief exponent. " It will be 
remembered," says Mrs. Orr, " that the beau- 
tiful and pathetic second part of the poem is 
a cry of spiritual bereavement, the cry of those 
victims of nineteenth century scepticism for 
whom incarnate Love had disappeared from 
the universe, carrying with it the belief in God. 



32 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

The third part attests the continued existence 
of God in Christ, as mystically present to the 
individual soul: 

* That Face, far from vanish, rather grows, 
Or decomposes but to recompose, 
Becomes my universe that feels and knows.' 

' That face,' said Mr. Browning, as he closed 
the book, ' that face is the face of Christ : that 
is how I feel about Him.' " 

Dr. Augustus Strong, in his " Great Poets 
and their Theology," from whose chapter on 
Browning the above incident is quoted, says: 
" It will not be doubted that the secret of 
Browning's persistent optimism lay in his 
recognition of Christ as God and Saviour. If 
the life that pulsates through all nature is the 
life of Christ and if the hand that conducts the 
march of history is the hand that was nailed 
to the Cross, then we may dismiss our fears and 
advance to the study of life's problems with 
cheerful heart, believing with Pippa that, how- 
ever great the intellectual difficulties may be 

* God's in His heaven. 
All's right with the world.' 

Or if any one still questions whether this is 
the real source of the poet's quietude as he 
faces the mysteries and seeming contradictions 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 33 

of existence," Dr. Strong would quote for him 
those well known lines from " A Death in the 
Desert " : 

" I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the world and out of it, 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise." 

Browning's unfaltering faith in God carried 
with it a mighty faith in man's inherent good- 
ness and immortality. He interpreted man's 
nature and destiny in the light of what he be- 
lieved God to be. If it be true, as Helen Keller 
claims, that " we cannot be optimists until we 
have an ideal," and we " cannot seek intelli- 
gently for good until we have known evil," then 
Browning was well qualified to be a teacher of 
life. If with DeWitt Hyde we define pessimism 
as " the art of emphasizing the evil " and op- 
timism as " the art of emphasizing the good 
and throwing the evil in the background," then 
Browning was the most consummate optimist 
of the nineteenth century. He did not close 
his eyes to unpleasant facts when he made Abt 
Vogler say, " Evil is naught, is null, is silence 
implying sound," nor with eyes wide open did 
he condescend to be a mere " painter of dirt." 
He always found " good in evil and a hope in 
ill success " because his faith was adequate 
to meet any fact or experience in the moral uni- 



34 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

verse. There were undoubtedly many flaws in 
his system of ethics, but his optimism was by 
no means an easy-going kind. Emerson was 
always serene, but he dwelt in the placid upper 
air of philosophy, " far from the madding 
crowd." Browning was " the prophet of 
struggling manhood," — " a man in a world of 
men." " He weaved his song of hope right 
amidst the wail and woe of man's sin and 
wretchedness." He could go with Carlyle to 
the slums of London at midnight and see the 
devil in a thousand human forms and still be- 
lieve, with Emerson, in the goodness and great- 
ness of men. Dr. Wescott said, " He dared to 
look on the darkest and meanest forms of ac- 
tion and passion, from which we commonly and 
rightly turn our eyes, and he has brought back 
for us from this universal survey a conviction 
of hope." 

" Is not His love at issue still with sin? '* 

Browning's power to depict evil in its worst 
forms is seen to no better advantage than in 
"The Ring and the Book." "He creates 
Guido, the subtlest and most powerful com- 
pound of vice in our literature, — except lago, 
perhaps, — merely in order that we may see 
evil at its worst; and places him in an environ- 
ment suited to his nature." 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 85 

" Midmost blotch of black 
Discernible in the group of clustered crimes 
Huddling together in the cave they call 
Their palace." 

He describes the mother of Guido and his 
brothers as 

" The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke, 
The hag that gave these three abortions birth, 
Unmotherly mother and unwomanly 
Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame. 
Womanliness to loathing." 

Against this dark background of human life 
the beauty, peace and strength of a pure soul 
like Pompilia's shine out all the more clearly. 
She 

** Sent prayer like incense up 
To God the strong, God the beneficent, 
God ever mindful in all strife and strait. 
Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme. 
Till at the last He puts forth might and saves." 

In commenting on these lines Professor Jones 
says : " We feel the poet's purpose, constant 
throughout the whole poem. We know all the 
while that with him at our side we can travel 
safely through the depths of the Inferno, for 
the flames bend back for him ; and it is only 
what we expect as the result of it all, that 
there should come 



36 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

' A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear 
place, 

. . . then flood 
And purify the scene with outside day — 
Which yet, in the absolute drench of dark, 
Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty- 
beam 
To the despair of hell.' " 

While Browning teaches the oneness of man's 
nature with the nature of God, he emphasizes 
man's individuality, and makes each character 
work out his own salvation. He leaves room 
for man's freedom, — 

" Life's business being just the terrible choice." 

"God's all; man's nought; 
But also, God, whose pleasure brought 
Man into being, stands away 
As it were a hand-breadth off, to give 
Room for the newly-made to live. 
And look at Him from a place apart. 
And use his gifts of brain and heart." 

God's purpose was 

" To create man and then leave him 
Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him, 
But able to glorify Him too. 
As a mere machine could never do. 
That prayed or praised, all unaware 
Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer, 
Made perfect as a thing of course." 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 37 

Browning was willing to trust man to the 
utmost in realizing the purpose of his being. 
Through sin, sorrow, sickness, mistake, failure, 
the soul must ever travel on until it finds itself 
in God. This faith in the ultimate triumph 
of good over evil is summed up in " Apparent 
Failure " : 

" It's wiser being good than bad; 

It's safer being meek than fierce; 
It's fitter being sane than mad. 

My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 

That after Last returns the First, 
Though a wide compass round be fetched; 

That what began best can't end worst. 
And what God blessed once prove accursed." 

Browning's faith in the immortality of the 
soul may rest partly on the scientific fact of 
the indestructibility of life as a whole, but his 
grand hope also grows out of his conception 
of the nature of God, out of his own spiritual 
instincts and his sense of the incompleteness 
of life here. 

" There shall never be one lost good ! What was 
shall live as before." 



What was good shall be good.' 



38 TAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

" On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven a 
perfect round." 

" All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good 

shall exist; 
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor 

good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives 

for the melodist 
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for 

earth too hard. 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself 

in the sky. 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the 

bard; 
Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it 

by and by." 

" And what is our failure here but a triumph's 
evidence 
For the fullness of the days ? " 

In a sublime passage in " Saul," after David 
has comforted the low-spirited king, he feels 
that he has come upon the truth at last, and 
argues the reasonableness of immortality on the 
basis of love: 

" Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ulti- 
mate gift. 
That I doubt His own love can compete with it? 
Here, the parts shift .^ 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 39 

Here, the creature surpass the Creator, — the 

end, what began? 
Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for 

this man, 
And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, 

who yet alone can? " 

He thinks it strange that we should 

" In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the 
greatest of all." 

Again he recalls the wonderful life with which 
Saul was gifted and of the love that had en- 
riched it. Such a life cannot fail utterly. 
The work of redemption may not be completed 
here. The soul needs an eternity to develop its 
latent possibilities. 

" To make such a soul. 
Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering 

the whole? 
And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears 

attest) 
These good things being given, to go on, and give 

one more, the best? 
Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain 

at the height 
This perfection, — succeed with life's dayspring, 

death's minute of night? 
Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the 

mistake, 
Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid 

him awake 



40 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find 
himself set 

Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new 
harmony yet 

To be run, and continued, and ended — who 
knows ? — or endure ! 

The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest 
to make sure; 

By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensi- 
fied bliss. 

And the next world's reward and repose, by the 
struggles in this." 

But what if the soul's finest spiritual in- 
stincts have been perverted and as a result the 
moral character has been twisted into some 
fiendish shape that belies the dignity of divine 
sonship? Every spark of goodness seems to 
have gone out of the life of Guido. If there is 
another chance for Saul, can there be another 
chance for Guido? We shall not go into the 
metaphysical difficulty involved here. Suffice it 
to say that according to the mind of Browning, 
God never made a soul in vain. If that were 
true, then he would still hope that somewhere, 
here or beyond, a point would be reached where 
" God unmakes but to remake the soul." There 
is not a spot in all the great universe where 
God's love is not present and " beyond the dim 
unknown " He is " standing in the shadow keep- 
ing watch above His own." There is a vast 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 41 

difference between Browning's idea of life and 
the mere fact of existence. Eternal life is pri- 
marily not a life of quantity but one of quality. 
The moral degenerate has not entered into the 
fullness of life. 

There stands Guido at " creation's verge," a 
lonely and loveless figure, indeed. He seems to 
have been cast out into " outer darkness where 
there is weeping and gnashing of teeth." His 
soul is shrivelling into nothingness. The real 
life is at a very low ebb. We see him 

" Not to die so much as slide out of life, 
Pushed by the general horror and common hate 
Low, lower, — left on the very edge of things, 
I seem to see him catch convulsively. 
One by one at all honest forms of life. 
At reason, order, decency and use. 
To cramp him and get foothold by at least; 
And still they disengage them from his clutch. 

And thus I see him slowly and surely edged 
Off all the table-land whence life upsprings 
Aspiring to be immortality." 

This is existence, not life. But Guido is not 
lost forever. Browning believes in a hell but it 
is a spiritual experience, — the slow or sudden 
awakening of the sinful soul to a realizing sense 
of the sinfulness of its sin. Punishment is 
remedial, not retributive, and it must fulfil its 
divine purpose here or hereafter. While God 



42 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

is Love, He is also Righteousness, and He often 
seems severe in the execution of His laws. But 
His justice may be only mercy in disguise. 
The poor restless soul, ever dissatisfied with its 
lower choices, is driven on relentlessly through 
the fires of pain that it may be purified and at 
last find its refuge and its rest in God. 

But the good man rejoices in the conscious- 
ness of his origin and destiny. In " A Death in 
the Desert," the atmosphere is charged with the 
power and the presence of the living, eternal 
Christ. In His companionship there is no 
doubt about the reality of the soul's resurrec- 
tion. The aged John hears of rumors that 
have spread through the world that would dis- 
credit the life and teachings of his Master. 
But he can testify out of personal experience 
that those rumors are false. In the quiet of 
his soul he still hears those reassuring words 
that had brought so much hope and comfort to 
the heartbroken in days gone by, — " I am the 
Resurrection and the Life." He can bravely 
face the last sunset and in its golden glow enter 
the gates of the " city which hath foundations, 
whose builder and maker is God." 

The changes of this life are the stepping- 
stones to something higher: 

" Man is hurled 
From change to change unceasingly, 
His soul's wings never furled." 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 43 

" The Future I may face now I have proved the 
Past." 

Neither the changes of this life, nor the last 
great change, death, can separate us from the 
love of God, nor prevent the ongoing of the 
soul: 

" Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure; 
What entered into thee. 

That was, is, and shall be: Potter and clay 
endure." 

Physical death is only an incident in the 
continuity of the spirit, — a shadow that has 
temporarily fallen across the river that forever 
flows toward the ocean of eternity. 

" O lover of my life, O soldier-saint ! 
No work begun shall ever pause for death! 
Love will be helpful to me more and more 
In the coming course, the new path I must 
tread." 

In " A Grammarian's Funeral " the old scholar 
is buried on the mountain-top 

" Where meteors shoot, clouds form, 
Lightnings are loosened, 
Stars come and go ! " 

He had spent a long life-time in the quest of 



44 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

truth and at the close of day laid down his tools 
with his work all around him, undone. But he 
had thrown himself on God and he knew that in 
another room of the universe he would keep on 
with his tasks. He said: 

"What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes. 
Man has forever." 

Death is the great Emancipator. There 
will come a time when we shall need the body 
no longer, having served the purpose of its cre- 
ation in projecting the soul on its way. We 
shall be glad some day to throw away the phys- 
ical body as something outworn and useless and 
thus be able to rise into the consciousness of a 
higher freedom, just as the bird breaks away 
from the shell, and soars upward, and fills the 
air with sweet music. 

Death seems like an everlasting sleep. But 
that is only apparent. The figure implies a 
renewal and an awakening. After the black 
night of sorrow comes the bright dawn of eter- 
nal day. 



Death with the might of his sunbeam 
Touches the flesh and the soul awakes." 



Browninff had within him the witness of immor- 

o 

tality : 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 45 

" Have you found your life distasteful? 

My life did and does smack sweet. 
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? 

Mine I saved and hold complete. 
Do your joys with age diminish? 

When mine fail me I'll complain. 
Must in death your daylight vanish? 

My sun sets to rise again." 

There are two short poems which the reader 
will forgive me for quoting in concluding this 
interpretation of Browning's faith, for they 
seem to me to express more clearly than any- 
thing that he ever wrote his own personal hope. 
" Prospice " was written a short time after the 
death of Mrs. Browning. The closing lines, 
which undoubtedly refer to her, express his 
conviction that he will meet her again in the 
life beyond and find love still unbroken: 

" Fear death ? — to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place. 
The power of the night, the press of the storm. 

The post of the foe; 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form ? 

Yet the strong man must go: 
For the journey is done and the summit attained. 

And the barriers fall. 
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be 
gained. 



46 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so, — one fight more, 

The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and 
forebore. 
And bade me creep past. 
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
peers, 
The heroes of old. 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's ar- 
rears 
Of pain, darkness and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 

The black minute's at end. 
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 

Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of 
pain. 
Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee 
again. 
And with God be the rest ! " 

The " Epilogue to Asolando " was the last 
poem that Browning wrote. It has all of the 
characteristics of his virile faith. It is not a 
sad dirge to whose mournful strains the brave 
soldier must finally march to his doom. It is 
" a kind of re-enlistment in the service of the 
good; the joyous venturing forth on a new 
war under new conditions and in lands un- 
known, by a heroic man who is sure of himself 
and sure of his cause." 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 47 

" At the midnight in the silence of the sleep- time, 
When you set your fancies free, 
Will they pass to where, — by death, fools think, 

imprisoned, — 
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you 
loved so, 

— Pity me ? 

" Oh, to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! 
What had I on earth to do 
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the un- 
manly ? 
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel 

— Being — who ? 

" One who never turned his back but marched 
breast forward, 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, 

wrong would triumph. 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better. 
Sleep to wake. 

" No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time 
Greet the unseen with a cheer! 
Bid him forward, breast and back as either 
should be, 
' Strive and thrive ! ' cry * speed, fight on-; fare 
ever, 
There as here ! ' " 

In its ministry to the manifold needs of the 
higher life the strong, robust faith of Robert 
Browning has been justified as over against the 



48 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 

deadening influence of the scientific materialism 
of the nineteenth century, and as knowledge of 
the truth has increased, the insolent dictum of 
Haeckel, with its implied prophecy of the 
gradual and ultimate destruction of the Chris- 
tian faith by science, has been proven false. 
With all the acknowledged defects in some of 
his last metaphysical experiments he has shown, 
in his work as a whole, the sweet reasonable- 
ness, the absolute necessity and the deep joy of 
religion, and he has with him today, in the 
spirit of his teachings, such representative 
thinkers as Sir Oliver Lodge, the eminent Eng- 
lish scientist, who insists upon a belief in a 
personal God who reigns at the center of 
things ; Henri Bergson, of France, with his 
" Creative Evolution " ; and Rudolf Eucken, of 
Germany, with his spiritual philosophy. If a 
generation ago unappreciative critics scoffed 
at the sound of this new voice that was making 
itself heard in literature, today they place 
upon the brow of this poet a crown of love. 
Prominent theologians from the ranks of or- 
thodoxy now find beneath the uneven and un- 
conventional forms of his verse a faith throb- 
bing with the life of God. His teaching as a 
working force in human life is recognized by 
no less a practical idealist and statesman than 
Mr. Roosevelt, who in a recent review of a 
book on Browning's work said : " There are 



FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 49 

poets whom we habitually read far more often 
than Browning, and who minister better to our 
more primitive needs and emotions. There are 
few whose lines come to us so naturally in cer- 
tain crises of the soul, which are also crises of 
the intellect." 



*' I go to prove my soul ! 
I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
I shall arrive ! what time, what circuit firsts 
I ask not: but unless God send His hail 
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, 
In some time, His good time, I shall arrive: 
He guides me and the bird. In His good time ! '* 

— Paracelsus, 



H 489 85 













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